The Thin Red Line

I have to say right off, going in, that I really wanted to like Clifford A Wright’s Bake Until Bubbly– The Ultimate Casserole Cookbook.   But Wright in several ways made that very hard for me to do.    The first time in the early pages he decried using canned cream of whatever soups in favor of freshly prepared bechmael sauces.  All of what I would call the easy steps in casserole-preparation have been replaced with extremely labor-intensive recipes which seem as though designed to show just how much hard work is normally replaced by the use of canned soup in casseroles that by the end of the 450 page plus new 2008 release I was mainly seized by an imperative urge to hurl the bloody book across the room.   This one is Not Recommended.

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If you’ve ever hesitated to eat seafood due to concerns about mercury or other pollutants or concerns about sustainability OR if you’ve ever hesitated to try cooking some exotic variety of seafood or other out of ignorance,  Paul Johnson has written the perfect book for you.   Subtitled "the definitive guide to understanding, selecting and preparing healthy, delicious and enviornmentally sustaingable seafood", Johnson’s Fish Forever is an encyclopediac guide to edibles from the sea.

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Having considered and rejected five other cookbooks for today’s post, I can say without hesitation that Andreas Viestad’s Kitchen Of Light is no ordinary cookbook.   There is first the photography,  which is highly evocative of Thomas Laupstad’s blog, depicting ethereal images of Northern Norway.   And then there are the essays, each like a postcard or travelogue from a  cold, exotic land.   And then of course are the recipes– largely for fish with just enough vegetables and sweets to make a well-rounded cookbook.

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I have a number of cookbooks on hand and was intending to do another Cookbook Roundup to round off the week on Friday.   But after spending some time with 1080 Recipes I realized that this one deserved a review all its own.   And my apologies for not getting Friday posted until  Sunday.

For more than thirty years Simone Ortega’s 1080 Recipes has been considered the authoritative volume on Spanish cooking and has sold millions of copies in various editions in Spanish.   This 2007 release from Phaidon Publishing is the first English translation for which Ortega and her daughter Ines have updated all of the recipes to be accessible to home cooks in the English speaking world.

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When I picked it up and perused the cover I had presumed that I would be panning Michel Richard’s Happy In The Kitchen.   Just seeing that Thomas Keller wrote the introduction made me immediately assume it would be yet another Big book of chi-chi frou-frou glam presentations and labor intensive nonsense that no one sane would ever bother to make.   But then I read the book and I actually quite liked it.

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If you are on a diet or lack a sweet tooth,  this week’s Cookbook Roundup is SO not for you.   I  remember when I was a small child, every summer when peaches were in season my maternal grandfather would drive over from his home in Alabama to visit us in New Orleans and bring us two big bushel baskets of the sweetest, juiciest peaches.   And always my mother and my Aunt Katherine would make homemade peach ice cream.   I have no idea what recipe they used or how they made it turn out so good without using an ice cream machine (they would blend the ingredients with a mixer or blender and pour it into ice cube trays and just stick it in the freezer overnight).   But all these years later,  David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop called up memories of icy, peachy goodness that have me practically salivating over the keyboard.

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Happy Monday!  Usually I select just three or four books for my "Roundup" posts,  but today I have no less than eight great selections from the cookbook aisle, all of which are variously  so interesting, unusual or  noteworthy that I felt I just Have to share them  all.

Martha Rose Shulman, a cook book author and cooking instructor, who achieved success in those fields without the benefit of any formal culinary education has penned a captivating memoir with recipes of her experience at "Culinary Boot Camp"– a one week program at the famed Culinary Institute of America intended for  home cooks.   The boot camp program seeks to give the hobbyist or home cook a grounding in the basics of classic cooking techniques and theories.

I was struck by the fact that even though, the boot campers are provided with cooking assistants to do much of the heavy grunt work required of  the regular students,  the schedule and pace of the program emphasize, just as the CIA’s regular programs do, the long hours and physically demanding hard work that are inherent to the professional kitchen.   While I did not think much of the included recipes,  I thoroughly enjoyed Shulman’s memoir.    Recommended.

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Because I completely depend on the Closed Captions to be able to understand dialog, I rarely go to movies in the theater and even for big deal pictures I am waiting for the DVD. And usually these days, Ron or I has pre-ordered it from the library and it is just a question of waiting for it to turn up in my mailbox. Which is how it is that this weekened we were watching for the first time The Simpsons movie. I loved it and insisted on watching it Twice.

Life Homer on the wrecking ball I have felt caught between a rock and The Hard Place when it comes to updating this blog lately. This past week I was much consumed with sitting anxiously in various medical waiting rooms as David had surgery and Ron had tests. (David is doing fine and Ron is scheduled for More Tests and we are hoping for the best.) Meanwhile everytime I find a moment to go online, it seems that Earthlink is down Again. Between Real Life interfering and Earthink beind down more than up, posts have been Very thin on this blog lately, and I apologize for that.

Here then is my Quirky Cookbook Roundup:

MMMMMM. Bacon. What better way to begin than with James Villas’ The Bacon Cookbook. Villas writes extensively about varieties of artisanal bacon now available from different sources the world over as well as providing over 150 recipes using bacon from the classic spaghetti carbonara to inventive new creations like the Swiss Apple, Pear, Potato and Bacon Braise, which I am positive would be either superb or inedible. Cautiously Recommended.

I really Should have made the second choice a book about chocolate to continue with The Simpsons theme and commemorate the classic bacon and chocolate ‘accident’ sequence, but the book I actually have is a guide to making scrumptious looking sweet baked goodies or every description from the pecan rolls featured on the front cover to delicate butter madelines and amazing muffins, tarts and brownies, Carole Walter provides a useful guide to the inexperienced to intermediate baker looking to make a smash at the morning coffee hour. And I’ve no doubt that Homer would be all over these sticky buns. Great Coffee Cakes, Stick Buns, Muffins and More. Recommended.

Today’s other two selections sadly do Not make the cut. Adam D. Roberts’ The Amateur Gourmet and Sudi Pigott’s How To Be A Better Foodie both seem intentioned to teach the basics of cuisine to people who have spent a lifetime ignoring it and suddenly and inexplicably want to learn. Not Recommended.

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Yes, I know that we are fully half a year away from Independence Day when a book celebrating the United States flag might be most appropriate, but I came across this lavishly illustrated, Very Over-Sized coffee table book the other day and just Had to share it. Long May She Wave is a history of Old Glory that is loaded with pictures of every depicition of the flag imagineable from actual flags to knitted and crotcheted rugs and matts to products like a cell phone and an airplance, completely wrapped in stars and stripes. At a USD 60.00 cover price I can’t really recommend buying it, but it is sure worth a visit to 929.9209 at the library to check it out. Recommended.

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This one is for Chelle, who lives where it’s cold and snowy, the sort of weather that makes a steaming mug of cocoa seem like the perfect idea.   Michael Turback has penned a delicious collection of recipes for a number of gourmet versions of  Hot Chocolate and a variety of cookies and sweets that go well with a cup of rich cocoa.    The Midnight Cowboy, made from Mexican chocolate, milk, Meyers Dark Rum, Kahlua and Jack Daniels  (a Very adult version) caught my eye and I swooned when reading the recipe for Black Bottom Hot Chocolate,  which first calls for making fudge and pouring it in mugs then pouring a rich hot chocolate over the fudge.   If you are a chocolate lover or live in a cold, snowy climate, Hot Chocolate is Highly Recommended.

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As much as I and some of my readers enjoyed the log mansions and other spectacular eye-candy architectural books I’ve featured,  I was struck by the fact that what seemed to touch most people’s imaginations most deeply was the idea of having a truly simple (though very nice) small cabin in the woods.   (And when I think about how much I hate housework, the idea of the small dream home becomes more and more appealing.)   So when I came across this loving tribute to a distinctive and distinctly small architectural icon,  I just knew I would have to blog about it.

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Certain cookies just mean Christmas.   For me,  buttery little balls of pecan studded dough rolled in powdered sugar (and known by all sorts of different names) are the Christmas cookie,  though I realize for others it may be gingerbread men,  sugar cookies cut in holiday shapes and sprinkled with red or green sugar.   Whatever your own personal #1 Christmas cookie is,  chances are you will find an excellent recipe for it in Lou Siebert Pappas’  The Christmas Cookie Book.

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Just in case you are keeping count, this is the fourth of my Twelve Books For Christmas.   While Christmas dinner is not quite the classic high-stakes, high-stress meal Thanksgiving so often is,  the Christmas season is often a time for many different sorts of parties.   Whether you are planning a very traditional Christmas Day dinner,  a seasonal cocktail party,  a pay-back-a-whole-years-invitations Open House or an intimate Christmas Eve supper, Williams-Sonoma’s Christmas Entertaining has a menu and copious and specific practical advice to make your soiree a success.   

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I really wanted to like Faith Willinger’s Adventures of an Italian food lover.   Recipes from 254 chefs all over "The Boot"  collected by a woman in Florence, Italy famous for writing about the best of its native restaurants and cuisine, charmingly illustrated with water colors of the featured chefs and food.    It seemed like a sure thing.

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Thanksgiving dinner is a notoriously difficult meal to pull off. It often involves cooking for a much larger number of people than even the most enthusiastic thrower of dinner parties is used to cooking for, and very often the planning, cooking and serving take place amidst severe emotional stress as less than amicable members of the larger clan prepare for and arrive for this annual reunion.

Whether you’re never cooked for this many people before and are in need of a life raft or are an experienced Thanksgiving host looking to upscale your menu a bit and learn the easiest ways possible for planning, preparing and serving this big deal meal, the editors and contributors of Fine Cooking magazine have got you covered with How To Cook A Turkey And All The Other Trimmings

An A to Z soup to nuts reference for the Thanksgiving dinner host or hostess. Everything you need to know about buying and cooking a turkey. Excellent recipes for easy side dishes from the traditional mashed potatoes and green beans to various flavors and variations for the turkey, gravy and stuffing to imaginative appetizers and desserts to round out the meal.

The book is well organized and clearly written. While not every recipe appealed to me, many of them did such as Garlic Roasted Green Beans with shallots and hazlenuts and the Cornbread Pecan Stuffing and the Chocolate Pecan Pie. If you will be cooking and serving Thanksgiving dinner, get a hold of a copy of this book. It will be a huge help. Highly Recommended

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Easy Board Books are practically indestructible– each page a thick sheet of laminated cardboard, these books are designed to be impervious to the roughest treatment toddlers can give them.

And why, you may ask, do I begin this latest cookbook roundup by talking about these chunky pre-schooler books? The answer can be found in A Man, A Can, A Plan which is an Easy Board Book for adult men who not only can’t cook to save themselves but also can not read shopping lists or comprehend grown-up cook books.

Growing up in New Orleans I learned to cook by osmosis. I’m not much of a baker but I can make most Cajun and Creole dishes I remember from home and they are usually almost as good as the ones I grew up with. So the ‘for men to stupid to boil water’ approach of this uber idiot proof love letter to the canned food industry rubbed me the wrong way, as did the 50 recipes, each featuring canned food. and each showing you the exact image of the name brand product to buy at the supermarket rather than just listing ingredients so the recipe for, for example Mexi Can Pie shows 2 cans Hormel Chili + 1 can Heiniken beer + 1 jar Chi Chi’s Mild Green Chilis + 1 can Pillsbury Grands! Biscuits = a steaming casserole showing 5 large biscuits, baked beautifully golden brown on top resting on a bed of hearty fortified chili. The words I’ve just used to describe the 5 pictures that take up 3/4 of the page showing this recipe are approximately three times longer than the instructions for assembling the dish. Not Recommended.

Having waxed gourmet-indignant over the love letter to the canned foods industry, you may be surprised that I am all but raving over Ron Konzak’s recipes showing about a hundred ways to make the lowly ramen noodle packet (which goes for as little as 10cents in some stores around here) into a meal you’d actually want to eat. If there is a classic pasta dish you adore, The Book of Ramen will show you how to make a tasty and enjoyable variation using ramen noodles and other inexpensive ingredients very creatively and effectively. Recommended.

I’ve long known that the food I grew up with in New Orleans was a unique cuisine blended from African, French and Spanish influences. And I have at many times in the past read about, sampled or experimented with Spanish and French cuisine. But I never thought that much about the African part of the blend until I happened to check in Classic African at work the other day. The okra from my gumbo (it is So good but there’s over 50 bucks of ingredients in that pot so I don’t make it very often) is used in these recipes in ways I would never have managed. Peanuts, yams, tropical fruits and coconut also figure prominently in many of these recipes, most all of which seemed either too sweet for me (chicken cooked in coconut milk?) or contained spices and ingredients I Really don’t care for at all. I suppose what I’ve described might sound good to you, and if it does the book is well- written with clear instructions and ingredients specified by US supermarket equivalents so to you only, this one is Recommended.

Strange Foods is the ideal cook book for the junior high school boy spirit that delights in the gross, disgusting and downright weird possessed by a person of any age or gender with college level reading skills and an appreciation for travel and history in addition to the above. Part cookbook, part documentary, all icky. Horrible things people actually eat and the author’s quest to find and meet those people who eat them the world over. From bats to urine and things much stranger than those this menu is a very striking book. Recommended only to those who meet both of the conditions noted.

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There was a time after I got laid off from Earthlink and before Joel got too sick to travel that we went on a kind of non-stop vacation. My current budget doesn’t permit me to travel very far at all these days, though I hope I will get the chance to roam again. And I also find I sometimes enjoy a bit of vicarious wandering through some of the excellent books about far away places that pass through our library.

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Just a short post today about a short book, over easy. Terry Golson is a professional chef who keeps a flock of 11 hens in her backyard in suburban Boston. The Farmstead Egg Cookbook is a tiny gem. Golson begins by telling you everything you ever did or didn’t want to know about eggs, such as why organic eggs taste better than commercially produced eggs, and why what she calls farmstead eggs– that is eggs laid by hens which are not kept in cages and can roam freely– taste better still. She also explains the grading and sizing of eggs and then tells you how to cook them.

You probably think you don’t need a recipe to boil an egg. Golson would not agree. If you’ve ever had a hard boiled egg with a greenish yoke or a shell that could not be removed without tearing away most of the white you would probably benefit from Golson’s instructions. After covering the basic preparations like sunny side up, over easy and scrambled Golson moves on to recipes for a wide range of dishes from the ubiquitous deviled eggs for snacking, to omelets and frittatas , then on to heartier fare such as swordfish kabobs with aioli , steak and eggs and spaghetti carbonara and finally to deserts including angel food cake and pistachio apricot biscotti that looked mouth watering in the photograph. Recommended.

In the library cookbooks are shelved at Dewey Decimal Number 641. This particular book can be found at 641.675.

A final note–the title of today’s post does not actually refer to the book mentioned above but is a hint or clue as to the topic of my next post, which will be up on Saturday. The first commenter to post the author or book title will win effusive praise. (JD, you’re not eligible since I already told you. )

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No, work wasn’t that bad, though it was a long week and I am glad to be to my Tuesday/Wednesday "weekend". I am continuing to upload and sort through Joel’s old image files and found the above amongst many, many, many other things. Thought it was cute enough to pass along.

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Busy Monday at work. Returns were very heavy and I worked my butt off. We had a new substitute working today and I was asked to show her the ropes and answer her questions. Katika was very nice and that made the busy day go by quicker.

No progress on the laptop front. Ron has not yet gotten the books he ordered from the library and honestly I haven’t the energy or enthusiasm to look for an answer online. My friend Brett says that SUSE Linux is extremely powerful but you have to know how to tell it exactly what to do. Unfortunately he is living over the mountains in Omak, WA with his hubby these days and thus not available to come try his hand at fixing it. He suggested we try instead Ubutnu, a more user-friendly version of Linux. Not only is this software a free download, they will even send it to you free on CD without even a shipping charge. I went ahead and ordered it. If we don’t come up with another solution before it arrives, I suppose I will try to install it and see if I can get it to work.

Today’s book theme is food. Back when we had cable Ron and I sometimes watched Alton Brown’s Good Eats on the Food Network. Sometimes he fixed wonderful stuff that made my mouth water, but I found his continual lecturing on the science of cooking a big turnoff, and the hokey sketches and gags he used to humorously demonstrate the scientific principles mega annoying. Ron brought home a copy of I’m Just Here For The Food the other day and I read it last night when I couldn’t sleep. The book was about the same as the tv show I think. Some of the dishes sound wonderful but the focus on science and the hokey graphics are very off-putting to me, as is his penchant for displaying recipes as a list of "software" (ingredients), "hardware" (tools and utensils) and "procedures". I am SO not open to computer metaphors just now. NOT recommended.

Yesterday I happened upon Taking Tea, and desirous of the serenity suggested by the cover photo brought it home. This one is a mixed bag. There is a bit of the history of tea drinking in various cultures around the world, a few recipes, some of which sound quite promising, and lots of photographs of tea services, pots, cozys, etc. I did make a cuppa to drink as I read it, but failed to find the sense of well being the photo made me crave. This one is not particularly recommended either.

Today I happened upon a copy of Milk Glass Moon, the third of the four Big Stone Gap books. I suspect I will read that during my days off. I also was surprised to find that Michael Tolliver Lives was on the shelf. Brought that home to re-read as well. Wednesday I finally have my first doctor appointment under my new insurance, which I am really looking forward to.

Happy Monday!

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